MTV ruined my mom’s hope for the Good Black Life for me, she said: Black husband, Black children, Black neighborhood. All because of the pretty white boys dancing and singing before my eyes as my hormones coursed through my adolescent body.

She was right…sort of.

I’ve had lovers of various hues in my life, but my long-term partners were white—including my ex-husband. I just knew that my love life would not be monoracial. Duran Duran and Adam Ant simply sealed that fate.

When I tried to find advice to help guide me on that path—my mom certainly didn’t and couldn’t help, since she dated and married only Black men—I read Essence. No help there: while I was dating the rainbow, Essence touted various admonitions on how to achieve the Good Black Life, including the Kente cloth-themed wedding. The advice and articles about interracial dating treated those relationships as, at best, aberrations.

Cosmo? Glamour? Beyond some “general” advice on “how to catch a man,” it was some variation of planning romantic evenings and Kegel exercises.

The first publications about interracial relationships—this was the Multiculti Late 80s and 90s–treated them as cure-alls for personal and institutional racism. I knew better than that, so that literature didn’t quite interest me. And I walked the other way — more like ran across the street and screamed down the alley — when Shahrazad Ali’s pro-intimate partner violence tome Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman became the dating manual and coffeeklatch topic du jour for Black women in the US. Nope, definitely not for me.

My biggest takeaway from all of this is—surprise, surprise—the media and some people in our communities deeply participate in the Dating Economics of Not OK. Part of that economy is advertising that having color is not OK, unless you’re planning to date and mate intraracially. (The logic: you’re all the same race, so you two should relate, right?) The realities are infinitely more intricate, but intricate doesn’t sell too well.

So, I’m hoping that Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s book, Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life becomes a best-seller. Because she not only takes inventory of all those dating-advice books cluttering bookshelves and e-reader lists, she also takes that rarest of inventory: an anti-racist feminist inventory of the whole dating industrial complex.

Mukhopadhyay reminds the reader throughout her book that these books consistently erase those who are not cisgender and heterosexual and able-bodied and middle-class. She also says that the dating industrial complex is also rather unkind to cisgender men–all of this because they’re trafficking in narrow stereotypes based on gender binaries. And if we believe in some sort of feminism? Well, Mukhopadhyay analyzes, these books try to make that belief the reason why we’re not getting laid, let alone married. We, to paraphrase DuBois, are the 21st century problem to be solved because, so says this literature, we dare to exist–sometimes caring about being in relationships and sometimes not.

Her take, for example, on how these books—along with communities and porn—and their net effects on dating and race:

The mainstream media is ripe with oversexualized images of women of color, and policy often stigmatized and shames this same group of people. Women of color and poor women are blamed for their inability to keep their legs closed and for having too many children. For marginalized groups of women, sex is not linked to pleasure and freedom; it is demonized and used as an example of all the ways in which these women lack self-control. As a result, a lot of conversation around sexual freedom discount the experience of people of color, failing to take into account how much sexual freedom is assumed to hinge on a woman’s privilege—be it because of her race, economic status, or social standing.

Of course, not all women of color are sexualized in the same way. For example, while black women are considered lascivious, always consenting and out of control, Latina[s] are considered exotic or overly sensual and Asian women are considered childish and prude. These particular stereotypes are reinforced through popular culture and pornography (just Google respectively “Asian women,” “black women,” or “Latina women” and then “women” and see what comes up). The common thread here is that nonwhite women’s sexuality is seen as outside the norm of white heterosexuality. It’s therefore something to uniquely desired, manipulated, exploited or controlled. Within this rather toxic climate, being a woman of color who’s in touch with her sexuality is an act of resistance. Pushing past the negative media depictions and still finding a healthy, healing, erotic, and functional sexuality is no small feat.

I have often felt trapped between discourses of sexuality. If I’m overtly sexual, I’m a threat to what it means to be a good, pious South Asian lady and to the white norms of sexuality. As a result, when I am sexual, I am confronting my ethnic community and the norms of white sexuality. Finding a more authentic sexuality that’s just me means pushing past what is considered the appropriate way for me to be sexual based on my race, ethnicity, and gender. This has meant a lot of experimentation, sometimes playing up how “bad” I am or being tremendously secretive about my sexual transgressions (well, clearly not after this book). And it meant sifting through partners and figuring out which ones are a little too obsessed with my being Indian.”

Then Mukhopadhyay breaks out a list on spotting an exoticizer.

Yes. She. Does.

But that’s what she does throughout her book…and that’s what I thoroughly love about Outdated. It’s a great, intricate mix of feminist thought, media literacy, and a couple of tips for dating while feminist (of color) from your you-ain’t-never-lied friend who’s that romantic realist. Mukhopadhyay lets you know that whomever you date—if you even want to do that—is perfectly OK.

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Can’t stand being exoticized!! I’ve also come into contact with a lot of “flirtatious racism” (???) which I just find really, really weird… has anyone else experienced this? Blatantly racist comments followed up by “I’m just kidding baby” etc…? (yeah, I spent a lot of my life dating shit guys).

Anonymous

I’ve been wanting to read this book so badly! Can’t wait to get a copy.

CLA

Seriously LOVED this book. It was the first thing I’d really read where ‘feminism’ wasn’t just used to refer to women; it’s about other minority groups too, in the context of dating. Loved it, and glad you loved it too Andrea!

YES. YES .and YES!!!!! as an Biethinc/Biracial woman who will enter the dating scene dating. I am sick of books like He’s not that into you and that Patty Steiner woman. Our dating culture is so messed up and THANK GOD for Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

C W

“Our dating culture is so messed up”

Our “self-help” culture is messed up. The problem is conflating dating culture with the people who offer dating advice :p

AndreaPlaid

Support an author and buy it, if you’re able.:-)

Anonymous

I must get my hands on a copy of this!! Definitely can’t wait to read it.

As a native american woman with a masters degree I have resigned to not dating. After years of dating, I have never dated a Native American man. And at the ripe old age of 34, all the Native American men I know are, married, already have children, haven’t gone to college, are in the military, in recovery or in prison. Or my favorite is I know one that are all the above. So all I have ever done is married interacially, and eventually, it does become an issue

Neurochick

As a person in recovery myself, I don’t think that just because a man is in recovery means they should be written off.

Anonymous

Nope, neither do I, but for personal reason, I can’t be in a relationship with someone in recovery.

Liz_zaf

Fascinated by the “list on spotting an exoticizer”. I generally go with the gut feeling. I find that it’s it can sometimes be a fine line between those who genuinely respect and appreciate your culture and those who are attracted to the sexualized “idea of you” based on cultural stereotypes.

Bob Gordon

I really wanted to see that list as well. Found the Kindle edition on Amazon for $9.95 but would rather not support proprietary mobi, soon to become the even more proprietary Kindle Format 8. Shopping for an ePub copy right now; $11.95 from Borders is the cheapest I’ve found so far. Would love to support the author directly, if you can purchase the book from Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s site. Not so much interested in dating advice — I’m with someone — as her corroboration and perspective.

Race, Culture, and Identity in a Colorstruck World

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Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves John Cho newsflashes.

Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Editor. You can email us at team@racialicious.com.